Science in every aspect is now in the sights of Right-Wing deny-everything lobby. I was horrified by Newsnight last night. Nature magazine is now under attack, as well as the East Anglian climate unit, and there is a whiff of McCarthyism or even Lysenkoism in the air. The scientists don't deliver the results the powers would like: let the science and the scientists be changed. Of course, the politicians have officially been on message on climate change but the right wing lobbies are scenting triumph now. Neither the BBC's Science nor Environment editor has tried to explain the process of science in all this and I haven't heard any message from the Royal Society or the international scientific community.
There is no need for an “inquiry” into the East Anglian Climate Unit. Every scientific paper published in a journal like Nature is subject to criticism by the work and the papers that follow it. That is what science consists of: an ongoing criticism of all previous work. Science doesn’t do inquiries: science already IS one big inquiry. Unfortunately, the science community needs to learn that the rest of the world works in an entirely different, sly and deceitful, way. Science has got to lose its innocence and learn to play streetwise in public; if not it’s going to lose everything.
In 1984 there is always an enemy but it can change overnight. In the real world, post 1989 there was a brief moment in which the Manichaean tendency seemed to have broken down. The communist bogey had lain down and died; Western capitalism was triumphant. Not being totalitarian, it took the West a little while to find a new enemy. In 2001, Nine Eleven ushered in the War on Terror and we were back with a dualist system of antagonistic ideologies. But now I fear a different battle is shaping up: science is sliding into the frame as the demon of the ultra right, especially in America where the tendency towards witch hunts against international “conspiracies” is most highly developed.
It now appears that in the two key subjects – global warming and evolutionary biology – science is assuming the role in the eyes of the Fox-News, liberal-baiting culture of an Un-American international conspiracy. In its eyes, Copenhagen is an attempt to introduce world government by a sinister band of, probably communist, unelected meddling fraudsters. Evolutionary biology is similarly a global conspiracy against their simple old-time religion.
It would be easy to pooh pooh this threat. Almost all of the world’s governments and most reputable scientists agree on the broad outlines of the global warming problem. The problem is what to do about it. Similarly, all reputable scientists know that evolutionary biology is the only system of knowledge that makes sense of the vast array of biological data we possess.
But I’m not so sure we can rest easy. The meme for hatred of any international body interfering with the right of Americans to pursue their traditional way of life is very deep-seated. Conspiracy theories can make a lot of headway even when the conspiracy is non-existent and the fear of it mere paranoia. Climate change is different. There really is an international consensus for action. All you need to turn consensus into conspiracy is to convince yourself that the science is fake and that the scientists are fraudsters intent on world domination. Scientific literacy in the western world is now so low that it only takes a few emails to convince a largeish section of the population that their worst fears are true: scientists have bent the data to fit their theory; global warming caused by man-made emissions is a scam dreamed up by power-hungry scientists. QED.
In the modern world, opinion is shaped by gesture politics – a president bowing on U Tube, the words “Nature trick” in an email, count for more than the thought-through, considered policies of Barack Obama or their entire edifice of Western science, on which the ultra-right depend for disseminating their poisonous blogs. Science now needs an Orwell in the face of this new assault on reason.
One reason that Copenhagen seems unlikely to deliver a binding agreement on carbon emissions is surely that a diktat was expected before the technical means to implement it had been agreed upon. This is Canute leadership: without a credible means of implementation you might as well command the earth to please move a bit further away from the sun. (Not that this would solve the problem: we would still be faced by destruction of the ocean’s ecosystems by acidification.)
The frustrating thing is that there is now a reasonable consensus emerging on some of the necessary technical measures for reducing CO2 emissions. They will differ for different regions of the world, but that is only common sense, and some areas of the economy are more intractable than others, but to make a start there are a few no-brainers….
Decarbonization of electricity production is the first solution to fall out. Electricity, not oil, is the lifeblood of our way of life. Once that is decoked many other areas cease to be a problem or, as in transport, a solution is readily to hand. Of course, there is a raft of competing renewable sources for electricity but the pattern is beginning to shake out. In countries with natural resources such as hydroelectric power, use them. In hot countries, solar thermal energy is becoming the favourite. This involves large solar arrays in deserts which simply use mirrors to heat water or other fluids to run turbines. This is a proven technology that needs to be scaled up to national grid level. At the beginning of November the German-led Desertec initiative, a £240bn plan to provide Europe with solar power from the Sahara via cable, was announced.Until that is in place, for northern hemisphere countries such as Britain, nuclear is probably the best short- to-medium-term option and here Ed Milliband and the government have got it right.
Electricity can certainly be decoked worldwide by 2050 at the latest. That brings us on to transport. The battle between hydrogen and electric powered vehicles seems to be over for the time being. The hydrogen economy might become viable decades later but as the US Energy Secretary, Steven Chu, says:“Is it likely in the next 10 or 15, 20 years that we will convert to a hydrogen car economy?' The answer, we felt, was 'no' ?” The electric car is racing towards viability. Given the pathetic state of the world’s auto industries, governments need to use the leverage given them by the recession to speed the introduction of electric cars.
For medium-to-long distance travel within continents such as Europe and Asia the electric train is the only way; in cities, diesel buses need to be replaced by electric trams and trolley buses.
These are the easy choices. Home heating and cooking, aviation fuel, synthetic chemicals and plastics are harder to call but we need a world forum to share information on the emerging technologies for these sectors. We have the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the world’s governments have been engaged in pre-Copenhagen diplomatic foreplay but why in advance of Copenhagen was a world technical body not set up to assess the different technologies: an International Panel for Emissions Reduction Implementation (IPERI)? Our smorgasbord of climate change discussion needs more of the roughage of technical nitty gritty and less of the politicians’ staple: communiqué fodder.
Here are two shopping lists: 1) removing wisteria £680;new fence posts £2,024; a massage chair £730; whirlpool bathroom suite £800. 2) Trident nuclear deterrent update £25bn; two new aircraft carriers £3.9bn; Joint Strike Fighters for the aforementioned carriers £12bn; third tranche of Eurofighter contract £2bn; identity cards £4.7bn; Heathrow’s third runway £9bn; Crossrail £16bn; and so on.
The second list comprises just a few of the major spending decision facing government. It is widely believed that the financial crisis means that we cannot afford all of these projects, and most were controversial even before the crisis, because they were indications of a country still trying to punch above its weight.
The really shaming thing about the MP’s expenses row is the revelation that with so many sleep-denying decision in the in-trays (for those in government, that is), some of them have found time for creative accounting in their domestic economies. The expenses row is a huge distraction from the real business of the nation. Never has “fiddling while Rome burns” been more apposite.
Whilst obsessing about such trivia, the government has spent more than a decade dodging big decisions – on filling the energy gap; on reducing carbon emissions; on curbing out-of-control Ministry of Defence spending on prestige projects for the Navy and RAF; on electrifying the rest of the rail network and rationalising its ownership and financing; on rebalancing the economy in favour of manufacturing.
The electorate seems mostly unconcerned and uninformed about most of these mega projects, especially the military ones. The government prefers to make these expert decisions on the quiet, and the Media, which should be creating a forum for debate on these big issues, mostly connives with the public in preferring prurience about dirty linen to examining the technicalities of defence procurement. It is easy to understand the furore. Most people haven’t a clue about the rights and wrongs of buying Eurofighters or JSFs. Why should they? But running a household is the only thing everyone understands. Mrs Thatcher used to play this card, claiming that she as a housewife would apply good housewifely principles when it came to the national budget. But it’s a sign of national inanity to be more concerned with MPs' feather dusters than with the great affairs of state and industry.
There is much loose talk now about people power. The humiliation of this parliament seems likely to open the door to a raft of celebrity MPs (the people’s choice) plus an intake of extremists. Do we really think that a Parliament – probably hung – containing the likes of Joanna Lumley, Esther Rantzen, a few Greens and a small but growing gang of UKIPs and BNPs will be better than the present incumbents at addressing the real shopping list. Because such a grotesque celebrity/extremist Parliament is where our obsession with MPs’ laundry lists seems to be heading.
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